Welcome to the Misadventures of Widowhood blog!

In January of 2012 my soul mate of 42 years passed away after nearly 12 years of living with severe disabilities due to a stroke. I survived the first year after Don’s death doing what most widows do---trying to make sense of my world turned upside down. The pain and heartache of loss, my dark humor, my sweetest memories and, yes, even my pity parties are well documented in this blog.

Now that I’m a "seasoned widow" the focus of my writing has changed. I’m still a widow looking through that lens but I’m also a woman searching for contentment, friends and a voice in my restless world. Some people say I have a quirky sense of humor that shows up from time to time in this blog. Others say I make some keen observations about life and growing older. I say I just write about whatever passes through my days---the good, bad and the ugly. Comments welcome and encouraged. Let's get a dialogue going! Jean

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Times Change and Husbands Die

Yesterday morning I watched my new 15 foot white pine tree
get planted back in the area where earlier this summer I had to have three
trees removed.It wasn’t an easy
planting because of all the tree roots underground that had to be cut out with
an axes and the wooded space the Bob Cat had to work in was like a Chinese
puzzle for the driver to solve. My new green friend is beautiful, though. It gives me
back my sense of privacy and the tree was well worth the $600 I had to pay.

After the tree crew left I decided I need a new garden
sculpture to use in front of a white decorative fence near-by and where some of
my husband’s ashes reside. The two metal chickens I’ve been using by the fence are
looking tacky so off I went on a mission to check out a country garden center,
hoping to find a good sale. No such luck but I did manage to take a wrong turn
coming home and ended up on a designated Nature Beauty road that wound around
and up and down and finally brought me to a bridge where I could connect with
a road I knew would take me home. I’d been lost in that ‘Bermuda Triangle’
before so I wasn’t too worried but it’s at times like that when I start missing
my husband all over again. He was my GPS. He grew up in this end of town and
knew all its secrets.

If I had a smart phone I could get an app to replace my
husband’s knowledge of back roads and highways but sometimes it's a good
thing to get lost. Life can get too hum-drum and predictable when we just go
through the motions of living. We drift from place to place, from season to
season without taking in the scenery that passes by. Then we get lost and we’re
forced to take note of things like the ladder-like pattern of shadows on the
road ahead cast by WPA trees planted in the 1930s, the sun-dabbled creek off in
the distance, the sound of gravel crunching under car tires and an early sign
of fall when you see a truck loaded apple crates leaving an orchard. Times
change and husbands die and maybe using a GPS would be a constant reminder of
those irrefutable facts? Maybe it’s better to get lost once in a while on a
beautiful afternoon.

A couple of young guys came this week to clean my carpeting.
I’m running behind. This is something I usually have done in the spring but
back then I was a tad busy with my flooded basement followed closely on its
heels by my broken arm. Life rolling along; there’s always something we can use
for excuses for why we don’t do what should be done. The house looks and
smells great again and the two cleaning techs had a real appreciation for art
so it was fun seeing my house through their eyes. One of them was a college
student, an aspiring artist, who stood in front a cowboy print for the longest
time as fascinated by its detail as my husband and I were the day we bought the
scratchboard.

It must be nice to be a college professor or someone in a
career that brings them in contact with young people like these two guys. I fed off their
enthusiasm and joy of seeing stuff they’d never seen before and I felt like
they enjoyed hearing what I had to say. How cool is that! Old people are okay for
me to hang around with---I am one, what else am I going to say? But septuagenarians
don’t get excited over much anymore. Times change and husbands die and maybe I
do really need to become a cougar after all? That is a JOKE, people. Don’t call
the paddy wagon to haul me off to get my values tuned up at the local mental
health hospital. What I’m trying to say is it’s been a long time
since I’ve been around people who love to learn for learning’s sake. I was like
that in my not too distant past and it was one of the things that bonded my
husband and me. When kids come along like my carpet cleaners, I see myself and
that makes me long to be young again.

On a different note May Sarton wrote something in a book I'm reading that speaks to me: “A life extended in a thousand directions risks dispersion and madness. A kite can fly only when it is held taut by a string in a hand and then
catches the wind. Today I am a kite entangled in a tree and there is no one to
free me for flight.”

* The frog up above is a garden statue I'm lusting after. The only reason I don't get it is because the place I need a statue is a little memorial corner of the yard and my husband wasn't into frogs, yoga or Zen. Neither am I either but I love the silly expression on that frog's face.

5 comments:

Love that frog. :) I bought some new meditation music recently and promised to give myself at least 10 minutes a day for meditation.

I have no sense of direction. It's awful. My husband is my GPS, too. You're so right. Sometimes it is good to get lost or take a detour. It gets our attention and we have to be present and see what there is to see.

I love the back roads--I don't usually get lost. A farm girl has a great sense of direction, I guess. My neighbor lady's come over and talk about going north--and they are pointing south--oh well. I love the froggie too--I have a couple--not like that statue--just plain froggies. I had a nice experience with a young repair guy today. He was noticing my wooden carved people and wanted to know where they were from. I really like young people--I don't get along much with people my own age--they seem so....old!

Judy, you make me laugh because I've often thought that people my own age are too old. Then I look in the mirror and I'm reminded that they probably think the same thing about me. In truth I don't think connecting with people has much to do with age but rather the connection comes from liking similar things.